Amer, tonight’s offering for Danger After Dark, is a hard film to describe. While the French-Belgian film is almost completely devoid of dialog, it more than makes up for it with an intense visual narrative that swallows you whole with its beautiful and horrifying imagery. The film is told in 3 distinct acts, each with a different look and feel that follow a troubled woman from childhood to adulthood on a journey of fear and self-discovery.
The first act is very reminiscent of Dario Argento’s Suspiria for both look, composition and theme. It’s a very dark chapter that lays the groundwork for things to come. The color palettes of Technicolor and the use of blacks and shadows are about as unsettling and claustrophobic as you can get. We are introduced to a very young girl in a very dark and ominous house haunted nightly by a gloved figure, and her recently diseased father; both of which she cannot escape.

The second act is a reprieve from the first; we are now in a small village in the Belgian countryside on a hot day.  The young girl has grown up, become beautiful and learned about the way men look at her. She leaves her mother who is getting her hair done to chase after a boy and comes upon a group of predatory bikers. The cinematography here is amazing, I don’t think I have ever seen lust and infatuation played out so well in a film, it’s really a sight to behold.
The third and final act is a love letter to the giallo films of the 70’s, from the look to the great inspired soundtrack. Beautiful and hard to watch the crescendo builds in a sexual and violent climax that fulfills an exquisite visual narrative. This act takes what was built on with the first two and executes flawlessly the groundwork laid throughout the film.
Amer is a very different film for as lush and visceral as it is visually. The narrative in Amer is more witnessed than told, and once you see it you will have a whole new respect for visual narratives. I’ll give Amer a 4.5 out of 5 simply because of the questions it leaves behind, which are plentiful. And although I understand what the director did I still want just a little bit more . But I highly recommend it.